Could Facebook Instant Articles neuter your content marketing?

Facebook Instant Articles (FBIA) is a new mobile format developed by Facebook and made available to everyone last week. It allows your readers on Facebook to access your content instantly without leaving Facebook, using the Facebook mobile app.

It’s quicker and more mobile friendly than linking to a website and Facebook believe if readers can access your content faster they’ll be more likely to consume it rather than leave because of slow load times.

Together with the latest Google algorithm update in May, it could be seen as another indication of how important mobile access to the internet has become, but as I’ll address later, it could also lead to a change in how and where content marketing works.

Is Facebook Instant Articles for You?

Some large publishers are already publishing Facebook Instant Articles, including Buzzfeed, The New York Times, National Geographic, the Guardian, and NBC News. Use the Facebook app for iPhone or Android to take a look at what they are publishing. Get an idea of the type of material they are using with FBIA and whether your content will work in the same format. If your content is best accessed via a desktop monitor then FBIA may not be for you.

What You Need for Facebook Instant Articles

If you decide you could use Facebook Instant Articles there are some things you should have in place first.

How FBIA could neuter your content marketing

The basic idea of inbound content marketing is that it gets the attention of your prospects, and draws readers to your website or squeeze page. As a massive source of traffic Facebook has played an important role in this process for many online.

However Instant Articles cuts this flow of traffic and keeps it on Facebook. There are no links to websites, sales pages or squeeze pages.

This is a coming trend. Google and Twitter have recently launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and LinkedIn is also working on a version of mobile friendly content that will keep readers on their site.

It seems that the big platforms are going to become dead ends. Our ability to convert readers to customers using content is going to be reduced.

At the moment I think it’s too soon to see what we can do about this. There may be an opportunity within the process that hasn’t yet revealed itself, or perhaps someone will come up with or further develop a platform that will be more content marketing friendly.

4 Responses

Davina · April 20, 2016 at 06:49:51 · →

Hi David,

It seems that we had the same topic idea this week 🙂

I didn’t know that Instant Articles prohibits linking to websites. I definitely agree that this ‘dead end’ approach by social media platforms is hurtful to publishers, and there’s a chance that publishers will retaliate in response.

Hi Davina,
Thanks for commenting. Seems we both have concerns about Facebook’s latest development, but as you say there are some features that will be of benefit.

Mike Gardner is The Time Doctor · April 20, 2016 at 09:44:24 · →

Hi David, I think as always it’s only a matter of time before we find ways to get around the dead end approach, I think that instant articles coupled with the new ability to live stream into groups and pages could be a game changer, we just have to come up with ways to use it to our advantageMike Gardner is The Time Doctor recently posted…Increase Your Personal Efficiency

David · April 20, 2016 at 13:26:02 · →

Hi Mike,

Yes that’s true. As always we’ll just have to remain agile and adapt, even if it eventually means using alternative features or platforms to spread our content.